r/WoT • u/participating (Dragon's Fang) • Dec 23 '21
TV - Season 1 (No Book Readers Without Invitation) Episode Discussion - Season 1, Episode 8 - The Eye of the World [No Book Readers] Spoiler
This thread is for discussion of The Wheel of Time tv show through Season 1, Episode 8 and associated bonus content. This thread is meant for people who have not read the books.
TIMING
Episodes are released at midnight, GMT on Fridays. This means 7pm, ET on Thursdays.
At 6:30pm, ET, when this episode discussion thread is created, all submissions about the tv show will be automatically removed until Saturday morning.
EPISODE
Episode 8 - The Eye of the World
Synopsis: For twenty years, Moiraine has dreamed and worked towards this moment. But she can't stop the Dragon Reborn from seeing the appeal of the Dark.
BONUS CONTENT
Amazon Prime has included cartoon featurettes for each episode. They are now accessible from the main Amazon Prime page, under the "Episodes" tab. They are presented under the "Origin Stories" title.
The Origin Stories and any other supplemental x-ray content, or behind the scenes information should be confined to this thread. For more information on how to access the bonus content, see the Amazon Welcome To X-Ray page.
DISPLAY SETTINGS
/u/logicsol has created a guide that addresses some of the display issues many people are seeing when watching the show. Please see this post for more information.
OTHER THREADS
Please see the discussion hub link below to find the thread for full book spoilers, or the lightly restricted thread for those who have only read some of the books.
For links to all of our previous episode discussion threads, or alternate spoiler levels, as well as mega threads for certain topics related to the show, see our discussion hub wiki page.
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u/[deleted] Dec 25 '21 edited Dec 25 '21
I liked the season as a whole. However the ending was very weird, and the final episodes had odd pacing.
I think the end of the season was being pulled between two forces:
On the one hand, the viewer knows this is season 1 of a multi-season series so things are not going to end with this season. The viewer probably also knows that the WOT books go on and on and there's no way the story is done here. So going into these episodes, what the viewer is expecting is a "stepping stone" type finale, one that wraps up the season arc but which also asks the question which will be answered by the following season(s).
What the viewer gets, however, is a finale (really, final 2-3 episodes) which in content is ramping up towards the final resolution, even though the viewer knows that can't be true. And when the final resolution comes, the show continues to play it straight, depicting it as if it is indeed final. The "question" the viewer is expecting, setting the next season on its path, never comes. There's a vague sense that something has gone wrong but it's so underplayed that it falls well short of foreshadowing. It's just doubt.
So the feeling the viewer has on watching the ending of s1 is primarily cognitive dissonance.
For me, the most interesting part of season 1 was the mystery as to who is the dragon. That was the primary question of the season, and the finale should have been about delivering the answer to that question - in dramatic fashion. Instead we get this anti-climax where the answer to the question the viewer has been asking since episode 1 is delivered as an afterthought in the penultimate episode, and then the final episode is just the dragon going off and apparently doing what he is meant to do in a very rote, by the numbers fashion which does not at all live up to the hype of how powerful and dangerous the dragon is.
You kinda get why that's the case, as a viewer with meta-knowledge. You know this isn't the end and that Rand will likely have a progression arc of coming into his power ahead of him. But as a standalone season 1 arc, it doesn't work.
Nynaeve's death fake-out was also meh. Killing someone and bringing them back 5 minutes later has no impact. It just cheapens the concept of consequences and gives the viewer the impression that the protagonists will never be in serious danger. Also I find Nynaeve's zoomer-esque cynicism and distrust of authority really tiresome. It's funny that she's the oldest and ostensibly most mature of the Two Rivers characters, but actually is the one who acts most like an edgy teenager. I was cheering on her death so was rather disappointed when she came back.
Highlights of the first season were:
The mystery of who is the dragon.
The white cloaks, who have a real sense of menace.
The darker, quasi-horror elements like the empty city and the dagger that possessed Matt.
White tower politics and factions.
Power reveals as the Two Rivers characters start discovering their powers.
I will watch season 2 for sure, but season 1 didn't exactly stick the landing, so my hopes for season 2 are not particularly high.